


Pillow Forts

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Fluff, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve tried to explain, but it was easier to <em>show</em> Bucky a pillow fort, so they built one instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillow Forts

Natasha had been the one to insist on Stark’s Tower. Steve had seen the inside of it twice, and decided he never needed to go back. Of course, Steve hadn’t needed much after they woke him up.

He hadn’t needed anything they could give him - and needed everything that they couldn’t supply. His home, buried under decades and beautification projects that razed it to the ground. His city, hidden under advertisements and headphones and sunglasses so that no one saw the person beside them. His … Bucky. His Bucky, a sharp smile and a hand up after a fight, a savior in a borrowed suit dragging Steve into a puny fortress of two cushions and a sheet that collapsed around their ears.

But God had given him Bucky despite Steve’s faltering faith. And if Natasha - who knew something of the hell Bucky must have suffered, who could understand the pain at finding yourself behind the gun - believed that the Tower was best, then Steve was willing to suffer through Tony’s idea of decor if it might help Bucky.

He drew the line at the chrome and leather couch, though. Nothing that uncomfortable could possibly help  _ anyone _ .

So Pepper put them in a different floor, with thick rugs and sofas that had real stuffing and soft fabric, appliances that didn't  _ beep _ every time they wanted something. Tony called it kitschy, or retro if he was feeling more polite than usual, but Steve watched Bucky rub the armrest of the couch and dig his toes into the rug after a panic attack and called it  _ home _ .

He did most of the talking, the first month. And the second. Sam brought in a counselor he trusted not to be Hydra, and Lt. Helen Griggs talked to Bucky about trauma and control. Eventually, around month three, Bucky started talking back, though he wouldn’t let Steve leave the room if anyone else was there.

That was all right with Steve. He didn’t like closing any door that put Bucky somewhere he couldn’t see him.

They started building the forts after about the sixth week. Steve didn’t mind rambling about their childhoods - it wasn’t that strange, to be the one doing all the talking. He thought of Bucky’s quiet in the chattering, giggling storm of his younger sisters. He thought of the endearments Bucky had whispered for hours, his arms tight around Steve’s weak chest when he collapsed as their fort did, screaming for his mother until they were both hoarse.

“Blanket forts?” Bucky had repeated, frowning. He rolled over onto his back to relay his confusion to Steve, long hair tangled in Steve’s fingers. Bucky seemed content, most days, to lay on the couch with his head in Steve’s lap, letting the blond man drag fingertips across his scalp and tell him stories of life in Brooklyn.

“Sure.” Steve tried to explain, but it wasn’t easy to explain  _ what  _ a fortification made of pillows was, much less  _ why  _ anyone would build one. “It’s a - well we - I mean. I know! We can build one now.”

Bucky looked intrigued. Though, every so often, Steve saw a memory he’d lost on Bucky’s face, in the slant of his eyebrows and the quirk of his smile. Every so often, he’d wonder if that expression had meant that Bucky was intrigued by the foolish grin on Steve’s lips and not the foolhardy plan he’d just concocted.

The first fort collapsed as they were building it, and Steve had never seen such a deadly stare levelled at an unoffending brown cushion. The second fort Bucky designed, muttering that Captain America obviously had no brain for defense if he couldn’t manage a basic hole to hunker down in.

That fort lasted until the middle of the night, when Steve had a nightmare. He’d caught his foot in one of the blankets, twisted and struggled to rip his ankle free from the train, trying to dive into the gorge where he could still see Bucky fall. If his screaming hadn’t woken Bucky, the fluffy layers of cushion and comforters landing on his head certainly did.

The third fort took them until dawn to finish - dawn the  _ third  _ day - and used every couch cushion and blanket on their floor, not to mention several nice, sleek cushions that Steve was pretty sure belonged in Tony’s office. The third fort could have kept them safe in an apocalypse.

Of course, by the time they finished it, Steve was exhausted. “Did we really need to do all this?” he wondered. “It’s just a blanket fort.”

Bucky tilted his head, brows drawn down toward his nose. “It’s to keep you safe,” he said slowly, sounding out the words. Steve didn’t fight the urge to hook his arm around Bucky’s waist, burying his face into a reinforced shoulder and wondering how much he had given away, telling Bucky about the funeral. “The last fort wasn’t safe.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, loosening his grip so that Bucky could return the embrace. “Think this one will do?”

 

It did just fine, keeping the nightmares to an opaque, downy haze and enclosing them both in filtered light and muted sound. Keeping the world out, the way it had since they were little boys when Steve had played the General and Bucky was his knight.

It did  _ not  _ stifle Clint’s giggles when his boots and Natasha’s multi-purpose stilettos came into view below the edge of a sheet.

“Is there a password?” Hawkeye asked in a falsetto, squatting down and peering into their fortified cave. “No girls allowed?”

Red hair spilled onto the hardwood floor, preceding Nat’s hazel gaze as she squinted into the dim space where Bucky lay on top of Steve’s chest, pinning him to a reality he had finally found a reason to believe in.

He lifted his head off Steve’s chest, but didn’t bother to shake Steve’s fingers loose from where they’d woven into his hair. Ran his metal thumb over the edges of Steve’s cheekbones, cool against the heat of Steve’s blush.

“Go away,” Steve grumbled at them, blushing even harder. “It’s a blanket fort. It was something we used to do as kids.”

“Looks like it’s something you still do,” Clint pointed out, snickering at the fuschia hue to Captain America’s face and shirtless tangle of super-soldiers. “Are you having one of those second childhoods that old people get?”

“Lt. Griggs says that re-establishing good sensations and positive memories can help with processing all the traumatic memories,” Steve parroted, mumbling the words into Bucky’s metal palm. “This was a good memory.”

And it had been, for all Steve’s grief the last time they had huddled beneath sagging cushions and worn, threadbare sheets. It had been the memory Steve clung to in 1943, leaping out of a plane: Bucky’s warmth and his strength and his willingness to build a way to shield Steve from the world, a promise that Steve would never be alone.

“It  _ is  _ a good memory,” Bucky corrected, his lips quirked into something soft and enigmatic as he traced the angles of Steve’s face. “If you would go away and let us make it,” he added, scowling at Nat and Clint before smirking, as though he could read every lewd thought crossing Hawkeye’s mind.

“We’re gone,” Nat promised, grin sharp enough to rival Bucky’s, laughing as she dragged a protesting Clint away. “But Stark is going to want his office chair reassembled!”

Steve waited for Bucky to climb away, or to shudder his way through the belated anxiety that often came when he interacted with anyone besides Steve. And he did tense, a little, but breathed through it and brushed his human fingers over Steve’s ribs as he settled back onto Steve’s chest.

His eyebrows slanted and his lips angled upward, as though it wasn’t the fort that made the memory worth having. As though it had always been Steve.


End file.
